'I absolutely felt threatened': Former VPD exec speaks out alleging workplace toxicity and complicity

She spent nearly 20 years working for the Vancouver Police Department, and now the woman at the centre of a lawsuit is speaking publicly about the threatening environment she claims to have experienced, and the alleged inaction of management.

She spent nearly 20 years working for the Vancouver Police Department, and now the woman at the centre of a lawsuit is speaking publicly about the threatening environment she claims to have experienced, and the alleged inaction of management.

Sharmini Dee, who went by Sharm Thiagarajah for much of her career, sat down with CTV News for a one-on-one interview where she provided more detail and fresh allegations, in addition to what was spelled out in the 16-page notice of civil claim filed by her lawyers on Friday.

"Silence always helps the tormentor, never the tormented, and the easiest thing would’ve been to just leave," said Dee, whose hands visibly trembled at times while she described her experience in the upper echelons of the Vancouver Police Department.

"I hope the place is investigated, because it’s absolutely corrupt, internally. That’s one of the things that I’ve seen and when you see something, you say something."

Dee described moving up the ranks of the public affairs department and being tapped by the chief constable to take on the director role. She eventually agreed despite some misgivings, and says she immediately encountered hostility from one of her subordinates, Sgt. Steve Addison, upon being named to the role.

She alleges behaviour ranging from daily micro-aggressions including eye-rolling and rude comments, to questioning her qualifications and "retaliatory abuse," with a particularly terrifying physical encounter that purportedly took place after she asked to speak with him privately on an occasion where he undermined her authority in front of the rest of the department.

"I asked him, 'Is it difficult for you to report to a female director?' and it got really bad. He slammed his book where I was sitting and he came right into my face and said, ‘The next time I speak with you I want representation,’ and then he got up and he left my office," she recalled. "I absolutely felt threatened, and I’m not easily threatened. I looked to see if his gun was in his holster, that’s kind of where my brain went."